Continued from Part 1.
Serving time and serving ****
Well, he’s back. UnitedHealthcare assassin Luigi Mangione was extradited to New York City, where he faces first-degree and second-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism. If law enforcement officials wished to stem the outpouring of online adoration for Mangione, they orchestrated possibly the worst conceivable optics.
Hawk goes tuah sleep
Like many viral internet stars before, Haliey Welch – ie Hawk Tuah – parlayed her fame into launching a cryptocurrency earlier this month. What resulted was a typical “rug pull.” Though the $HAWK memecoin rose to $490 million immediately after it launched, buyers immediately halted all trading activity, and the coin lost 95% of its value within a single day. Fans who participated in the buying frenzy were left with a worthless coin.
Welch has not been heard from in over a week, when she interrupted a Twitter Space to say she was going to bed and would be back in the morning. (If it’s been a while since you’ve heard her voice, prepare yourself.)
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Shortly after the November election, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) put herself in contention to serve as the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee in the next Congress, the main investigative committee in the House of Representatives. As ranking member, Ocasio-Cortez would influence the committee’s priorities and represent the Democrats in committee hearings. More importantly, her election would signal the party’s elevation of younger voices who can communicate more effectively with the public via social media.
However – thanks in large part to behind-the-scenes vote whipping by the often infuriating, almost always effective Nancy Pelosi – she ultimately lost a vote of House Democrats 131-84 to 74-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, prompting concern that party leaders are unwilling to evolve and embrace the next generation.
Complicating the narrative somewhat is the fact that many of the progressives revered by younger Democrats are themselves not young.
And, credit where it’s due, at least Nancy Pelosi makes no bones about her philosophy.
How big a deal this is depends on your theory of change for the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, this episode lobbed our incoming president a softball and he’s not one to pass up the opportunity to troll.
What we miss when we misbehave
There was a time when this newsletter ran on viral articles in The Cut. Though they are fewer and farther between these days, their personal essays still have the ability to drive discourse for days at a time. This week, just as the Wicked press tour has finally died down, Dr. Lilly Jay – ex-wife of Wicked actor Ethan Slater, who started a relationship with his co-star Ariana Grande – published a piece chronicling her experience with the very public dissolution of her marriage while working as a mental health professional.
My entire adult life, I feared that loss of control and postpartum depression would destroy me. One day in London, I looked up and found that they had both arrived. And I am okay. If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself. You know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it’s already a bit wet? Maybe we can think about my messy not-so-personal life in that way: a dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours. I cannot resolve the incongruity of a career in helping others prepare for the exquisite fragility and beauty of pregnancy and postpartum and then having my own world upended. But I can start hearing myself when I tell patients that avoidance maintains fear, and maybe it’s time to accept that I’m not unknown anymore. –The Cut
The article is meditative and mature, but everybody is allowed a bit of mess. (Slater is often compared to one SpongeBob SquarePants.)
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